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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


    love is my religion; oriash
    #1

    love is my religion. i could die for that.

    Aegean still lives in the Cove—or, at least, he thinks that he does. 

    It’s more and more difficult for him to keep his wanderings contained. More and more difficult to stay connected to the reality of the earth around him when the dreams in his head and those that he weaves in front of him are so much more enticing. But unlike his dreamweaver of a mother, he does not need to be asleep to escape to them—and thus, he does not spend many hours of his life trapped in slumber.

    Instead, he wanders. He paints with wide brushstrokes his new world, what the world could be. He travels through the Taiga and the trees explode with color. He walks the cliffs of Nerine and watches the water rush up with the intricacies of galaxies. And he soon enters into Loess, unbeknownst to him, watching as the ground beneath him is lush with flowers, the wind weaving colors through his pale mane.

    It is only when he sees the young girl that he pauses, taking in the leopard markings and the antlers that just now begin to grow atop her head. He looks at the women by her side—his mothers—and his own gifts reach out to paint in his older siblings, from Rhaegor to Abysm. His smile curves gently, dreamily, as he walks toward her, his beautiful head tilting down so that his amethyst eyes can study her quietly. 

    “Hello, little one,” his voice walks the fine line between delicate and solid, weaving into the air as he watches the illusions of a family that no longer cradles him. There is something like relief, or pain, that shadows across his face, but it disappears quickly, fading into the ocean of his wonder at her.

    “My name is Aegean.” Another soft exhalation. “Why do you day-dream of my mothers?”

    i could die for you.



    @[Oriash] - So I took some liberties here and just assumed she would have Kag / Solace by her.

    If you don't want that, let me know and I can tweak. <33
    #2

    they promised that dreams can come true

    She has taken a liking to Loess. There was much of the world she did not yet know, and even much of Loess that she does not yet know, but she finds more comfort here than she ever did in the Cove. Perhaps it’s just a bit of Stockholm syndrome setting in, but then again, she left the Cove almost willingly, seeking something more. Perhaps Loess was enough, and perhaps not, but it was something and she found herself enjoying the rocky landscape and it’s strange and varied flora and fauna. She missed the black sand beaches of the Cove, but she missed little else.

    Today, as she does many days, Ori curls up on the ground perched near one of the saltwater springs. She still gravitates toward the water here and she did in the Cove. Her mothers are with her, as they so often are, brought to life without a second thought. They come at go at will, as if they truly were alive and with her here. They graze nearby as she practices, drawing fish of rainbow colors into the water before her. The sunlight catches their scales and she imagines how the water around should glitter with those colors and with the thought, it becomes real.

    She’s grinning at the fish below, too distracted by her own handiwork to notice the stallion that approaches until his voice breaks the silence. She looks up, startled, scrambling to her feet. The fish in the river disappear, though her mothers stay. They are second nature to her; they are the piece of her power that controls her and not the other way around. It is only once she’s on her feet that she notices the other horses with them now. They are real enough, but she can sense the difference, the illusion that lives within them and she finds herself staring at the illusions for a moment and then back at this stallion.

    He looks nothing like her but for the antlers on his head, though antlers are common enough she can draw no parallel. Still, he had said my mothers and her mind is stuck on his use of my and the other horses that now populate the grassy area nearby. “Because they are my mothers too,” she answers, finally finding her voice and, despite everything, her voice is calm and cool as it always is. Ori is nothing if not both practical and childish all at once, though every day a bit of that childish-ness slips from her.

    “I’m Oriash, or just Ori. Who are they?” She nods toward the other horses he has added to the herd, and she does not need to ask where they came from. They are not hers, and she simply knows they can only be his and the he is like her. The thought excites her, the realization that he might be willing to teach her. There’s some nibbling excitement at having family, but she cannot trust that, having been let down her the very family that should not have failed her so young. She could not dream of such a thing now, but she could dream of learning how to control her power.

    Oriash

    but they forgot that nightmares are dreams too



    @[aegean] - no need to change, I love it <3
    #3

    love is my religion. i could die for that.

    Aegean can relate to wanting to look elsewhere. Once his mothers had faded into the Beqanna backdrop, once his family had receded like the tide leaving the shore, he had felt himself drifting further and further from what had once been considered his forever home. But he was not meant to be trapped within the Cove forever. He wasn’t not meant to walk the same paths a hundred times over, and he soon finds that he finds new ones. Some go to places recently discovered; others to places he has yet to see before.

    In both cases, he finds something worth treasuring.

    But never before has he found something worth treasuring quite as much as this. Her gifts call to him and they weave around one another, the family so real and so close that his dreamer’s chest aches with it. When she finally answers him, her voice significantly more rooted in reality than his own, he cannot help the smile that spreads across his beautiful face. “So you must be my sister then.”

    He has always known the triplets; from birth, they were pieces of unchanging parts of his world. But he had been in this situation before. He had run into family who did not know they were family with Abysm. This feels different, and he wonders at that. “Then these are your siblings,” he pauses, far-seeing eyes almost wistful as he corrects himself. “Our siblings.” What a strange and marvelous thing.

    He calls the first one forward, breaking them apart from the rest. It is a young stallion with of gold and white with blue markings and the familiar leopard tattoos that she carries in her own way. “This is our older brother Rhaegor.” The stallion steps back as the young mare steps forward, her proud head carrying the familial antlers, her bay body marked with leopard prints and her mane woven with blue. “This is our sister Warlight.” She steps back as another stallion steps forward, a mix of white and cream, gills hidden amongst his fur. “This is Sviko.” From behind, a fuzzier male comes into focus, the pale gold of him and the ghosts of his eyes clearly painted. “And this is our brother Abysm.”

    A half-brother, but that had never mattered to Aegean.

    The same way it wouldn’t matter if he knew about his half-siblings on Solace’s side.

    But he doesn’t so the dragon-twins don’t make an appearance. Instead, he lets the brothers and sister fade into the background once more, turning his head in her direction, waiting patiently.

    i could die for you.



    @[Oriash]
    #4

    they promised that dreams can come true

    She does not find new paths, but she creates them. They are not real, of course, but her mind rarely knows (or cares) about the difference. They are real enough that she finds herself lost in the worlds she creates. So often the world is similar to this one, but she finds herself living some different variation of her own life. Lies are easiest to believe when they are close to the truth. In many of them, she knows her mothers. In some, she has made up friends to play with and siblings to trick. There are none where she knows their true faces though.

    So you must be my sister then, he says, and she cannot believe that she hasn’t made him up as well. She tries to let go of her power, but either she’s too lost in the illusion or he is truly real. It seems strange to go poking at him to determine his solidity (it is the easiest way for her to determine reality), so she refrains, looking for some other clue for the truth of him. He looks so unlike her though. In her dreams and her illusions, her siblings at least resemble her mothers in some way. How would she have made him up?

    Besides, he paints a whole family for her. Her eyes go a little wide as he pulls them forward, one by one, introducing them (in the only way one can introduce an illiusion). “Our siblings,” she murmurs as he introduces them. She watches with a fascination she has rarely known, even as a child should know such fascination. This though is real, and reality is a fascinating thing. Her own reality, something so warped and uncertain for her.

    He finishes, and she finds herself overwhelmed and yet longing for more. More siblings to know but not truly know? Or simply to know them, to know a family she has only imagined having. Such a possibility never truly crossed her mind.

    “You are like me?” she asks, though it is only half a question, referring to his power and not to their clearly shared family. “Can you control it always?” The phrasing is awkward in her question, but she doesn’t know how to ask the question. She can’t quite bring herself to ask if he too loses the line between reality and illusion so easily, fearful that it’s only her, that it will always be only her.

    Oriash

    but they forgot that nightmares are dreams too



    @[aegean]
    #5

    love is my religion. i could die for that.

    I She, like so many of his siblings, is different than he. They each share a piece of him, and he in turn a piece of them, but he himself is so of his own. He has spent more time in his own head than in the real world and he has yet to truly understand the repercussions of the land around him. He has known that his, their, mothers wore a crown and relinquished it. He knows the plague has touched them—he remembers the fever and the blood on his lips if nothing else. He knows and yet he does not feel it.

    So much of it simply washes over him, leaving him untouched.

    But there are pieces that he recognizes reflected back at him as he looks at her, taking in the parts of hers that are so clearly passed down, and he cannot help but smile, dreamy and ethereal and overjoyed. “I am,” he confirms, letting the illusions of their family softly fade in the distance to leave just the two of them.

    At her question, he angles his head, making sure to give it the proper amount of thought.

    “I can and I can’t,” he says and he begins to weave something like an ocean around them, the waves pulling at their fetlocks and rising around their cannon bones. He can taste the salt on the air and the faint freshness that can only mean the open sea. “I can bring things to life as easily as mother can control the planes of the dreamworld, but they are like this ocean.” There is a faint rumble of thunder in the distance, a crash of wave that he doesn’t let hit them. “But it has a life of its own. It’s easy to fall into the tide.”

    i could die for you.



    @[Oriash]
    #6

    they promised that dreams can come true

    Ori, in her way, always lives in the world. The problem is not that she attempts to live in her illusions but rather that she cannot always tell the difference. More often than not, her illusions feel real, brought about without her even realizing it. She knows, by now, that her mothers are one such thing and their reoccurrence is now obviously an illusion, but she recalls the first few times it happened. The truth slipped away from her, and she lost herself in the company and presence, believing herself asleep and dreaming with them by her side. That was not the truth, but she could not tell the difference, and though she knows it now her brain cannot quite grasp it. Reality is a slippery thing, blurred by a power she has never quite grasped.

    A smile slips onto her face as he confirms what she already knows, and she listens intently as he answers. Her smile does not falter here, but is thoughtful and glad. The truth was she was afraid it was just her, that this power consumed only her own mind and left her grasping at the straws of truth and lies. Lies feels like the wrong word for her illusions, for the experiences she lives despite them not being ‘real’. What is real, anyway, but what she believes? Is it any more complicated than that?

    Of course it is, but sometimes it’s easier to believe that it is not.

    Her grin widens at the ocean that he weaves around them. The water is cool and pleasant, tugging at legs with its gentle pulse. Around them she begins to paint brightly colored fish into the ocean. They dance around the legs of the two siblings, dashing in and out without fear. After all, what did illusions have to fear? A particularly orange fish leaps out of the water, trying to launch itself over Aegaen’s head, dripping water in its wake. Ori doesn’t let her face betray her, though there’s a moment of little sister happening here as she hopes the dripping waters ends up on his head. She is, though, very good at keeping her features schooled into place. At least for the moment, till she sees how it ends.

    Her eyes drift to the illusion, her mind to the feel of the water around her. It’s luxurious, in a way, and she understands what it means to get lost in its tide, to be pulled right out of reality into the depths of something so beautiful. “I often can’t tell the difference,” she admits, a thing she has never said aloud to anyone. “The first few times I saw my…our…mothers, I thought it was a dream and they’d come to visit.” They were the easiest example, though there were countless others. Ori would fall asleep in one place and wake in another, though she’d never moved in her sleep. Reality and illusion simply swept in and out like the tides of the ocean around them.

    Oriash

    but they forgot that nightmares are dreams too



    @[aegean]

    Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission





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