• 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


    with weightless souls; alita
    #1
    isilme
    steady as the stars in the woods
    She is a restless child.
    The world of Beqanna is big, and Isilme has seen so little of it. She hasn’t been anywhere, really, outside of Silver Cove, though she finds it dreadfully boring there. It’s beautiful, yes, and she loves her mother and sister, but she wants to explore. She tries to follow her mother to Tephra as she leaves for the war—yearning for excitement and positive of her invincibility—but is quickly shut down by her mother and Spot. She hears the stories of Loess, the central-most kingdom, and their holding of healers in captivity and Isilme can’t help but be simultaneously horrified and fascinated.
    So, naturally, Loess is the next place she wants to visit, once the war is over and fewer eyes are watching her.
    She doesn’t tell Spot where they’re headed on this bright spring day, and he follows behind the little lion cub loyally. Occasionally, she grows tired of walking and throws herself on the ground in a silent tantrum. No one else in her family—her mother, nor Austra, not even Clayton—had wings like she did, so she had yet to learn how to use them.
    Eventually, with Spot’s patience (and a few eye rolls), the zebra and the lion-girl reach the rocky hills of Loess. She shifts back into her horse form, dragon wings tucked tightly to her golden side. She understands that she is less threatening as a young girl than a lion (though whether she is threatening at all is certainly up for debate), and although she doesn’t respect boundaries, she still doesn’t want to join the captives.

    careless and young, free as the birds that fly


    @[alita]
    #2
    and I can't get to sleep with that wolf outside my door

    Alita finds that Loess is not quite as big as she had once imagined.

    Perhaps it is the maze that still eats up so much of its landscape. Perhaps it is the way that the air is full of grief after the war they had helped wage. Perhaps she herself is just getting larger and the things that had once seemed so incredibly big now feel, well, manageable—more ordinary than she had thought.

    Regardless, it leaves her feeling a little empty on most days. A little unsure.

    She doesn’t like the feelings that she cannot easily understand. She doesn’t like the way that they slip under her skin and make things so difficult to navigate. She doesn’t like the way that they seem to echo within her—the way that she can barely take a step without feeling like she’s falling into quicksand.

    It doesn’t matter because her thoughts are snagged on the arrival of the pale gold girl and her companion on the border. Turning her gold eyes upward, the halo atop her head askew, Alita focuses, trying to better see the pair. Frustrated, Alita throws her wings wide and jump upward, climbing high and soaring before tucking her wings and diving. She lands gracefully—the physical is one place the word can be truthfully used to describe her—and she is grinning by the time that she tucks her wings back in again.

    “Hi,” she greets, sharp teeth glinting behind her velvet lips. Her eyes move from the young girl to the zebra by her side. She feels a faint rumble of hunger in her stomach and she frowns again. “Did you bring lunch with you or is that,” she hunts for the word, biting her lip before settling on it, “a pet?”

    It seems more likely to be food, but she supposes she can never be too careful.

    Alita



    @[isilme]
    #3

    oh, i was reckless, once was breathless
    but i’ve got a feeling and keep believing i’m never gonna give this back

    She doesn’t recognize the stench of grief in Loess.
    She is unfamiliar with the feeling of loss and profound sadness. Her life so far had been privileged, to be sure; surrounded by love and a full family. Her mother and father weren’t married (quite the opposite; they fought constantly), but they were both still good to her and Austra, and Isilme had never felt as though she was missing anything. She certainly hadn’t known death before—unless, of course, you count the insects and squirrels she enjoyed hunting.
    She is disappointed when she doesn’t notice a shift in the air when she arrives in Loess. It’s just a land, like any other.
    Isilme does, however, feel a shift when a girl lands in front of her with a devilish grin.

    Surprisingly, it isn’t the first time that Spot has been threatened by being eaten. He is a companion to a lion, after all; one with a particularly aggressive attitude. “Obviously, I would’ve eaten him already if he was my lunch,” she says, the eye roll that follows automatic. “No, he’s my friend. This is Spot.” All he does is sigh loudly in response.
    “I’m Isilme,” she says, studying the girl in front of her: blue and golden, haloed and sharp-toothed. She is graceful in ways that Isilme has never been—she is beautiful, yes, but rough. Everything she does is a little harder, a little more forced, but Alita is soft and smooth. Isilme’s eyes trace the curves of Alita’s back, her hips, before re-focusing on her wings. She shuffles her own wings, shifting her weight back and forth before blurting, “Can you show me how to fly? I haven’t learned yet.”

    isilme

    #4
    and I can't get to sleep with that wolf outside my door

    If there is grief in the air at Loess, or rage or any other emotion, it does not touch Alita. She does not feel it, does not become overly distracted by it. Instead, she feels nothing but the freedom that she has been afforded her entire life. She lives with her father and adoptive mother, but she is largely left to her own devices which suits her just fine. It gives her the freedom to roam and explore and be herself.

    And being herself is her favorite thing of all.

    So she doesn’t fidget or grow uncomfortable underneath the other girl’s gaze. She has little reason to think that there’s anything worth being concerned about and she watches with a faint quizzical expression, touching her brows and pulling at the edge of her mouth as she engages in rare deep thought.

    For a second, her golden eyes flick to the zebra, taking in his name.

    She ponders it but never considers thinking the name strange for a striped creature.

    Instead she just nods. “Okay.” If the girl said that the strange horse-like creature was her friend than she would not try hunting it. There was plenty of other prey to capture her attention, after all. “Is-eye—,” she tries the name, frowning at the vowels. “Is-eel,” she tries again and then pauses, her scowl deepening.

    “Can I call you Izzie?”

    There is a faint hope on her expression that wipes away with distraction at the request. Her own wings flare slightly at her side, wondering at what it must be like to have never taken to the sky.

    “Of course!” Again, her gaze moves to the zebra. “But you’ll have to leave Spot. I can’t carry that much.”

    Not yet, at least, she thinks to herself with a small mischievous grin.

    The depths of her future ambition when it came to her own strength had no bounds, after all.

    Alita



    @[Isilme]
    #5

    oh, i was reckless, once was breathless
    but i’ve got a feeling and keep believing i’m never gonna give this back

    It’s easy to look at this blue and gold girl, she thinks.
    She tries not to let her eyes linger for too long, but Alita doesn’t seem to be bothered by her gaze anyway. Isilme is still for a moment, then, before turning her head, looking down at the center of Loess (probably pleased that she is both physically and metaphorically above them all).
    Alita seems so confident, so unconcerned, even when she stumbles over Isilme’s name. Isilme turns back to the girl, smiling slightly, her amusement obvious. “Sure, that’s what my family calls me,” she says, shrugging. Then, grinning: “but it is kinda weird you can’t say it. It’s pretty easy.” She ignores the fact that she doesn’t know the sharp-toothed girl’s name.
    She blinks, turning her topaz eyes to Spot. “Oh that’s fine, he can stay! He won’t mind.” She tosses her silver and golden head, motioning at Spot. Go away, she says to him. He scrunches his mouth in annoyance but turns to find some foliage to snack on.

    “Okay, this is what I can do. Ready?” She says giddily before jumping straight into the air, and with one large flap of her wings, she is airborne for about ten seconds before falling back to the ground with a thud. She laughs—a deep, joyous laugh that erupts from her belly—before turning back to the other girl.
    “Impressed?”

    isilme



    @[alita]
    #6
    and I can't get to sleep with that wolf outside my door

    Alita takes no offense when the other girl ribs her for not being able to pronounce it. “I can’t say a name but you can’t fly,” she says bluntly, rolling her shoulders and then giving a devilish smile. “So really who is weird?” Her smile deepens in the corner and she feels a strange warmth in her chest—something like companionship or something and she relaxes into the sensation, into the feeling of being known.

    She watches quietly as Isilme dismisses her zebra friend, jerking her head silently as if in agreement with what she said silently, but her attention it trapped quickly by the other girl again.

    “I’m ready!” she exclaims, taking a step back and resting on her heels as she watches as the other mare flaps her wings and takes off a little bit. She laughs a little, mostly in response to the contagious feeling of Isilme’s laughter, and then takes a step forward, bumping her nose against the girl’s cheek.

    “That wasn’t too bad,” she giggles, sharp teeth glinting. “But it helps if you’re going fast and you have to try and flap them a few times.” She scrunches her face in concentration. “It’s not easy to just go up and stay there—but if you’re moving forward then it can be a little easier I guess. I don’t know.”

    Not great at words, she decides it’d be better to just show her what she meant.

    She takes a step back, face falling into sterner lines as she concentrates. Then without any preface, she digs in and begins running, wings flaring out at her sides and beating powerfully. She leaps into the air and lets the wind catch her, beating her wings to catch momentum as she swoops up and then curves around. After a few minutes, she glides, arcing in the air and then circling back around to Isilme.

    She brings her wings in and dives to the ground, landing and taking a few running steps forward.

    She shakes the dirt from her shoulders and looks over her shoulder.

    “Now you try!”

    Alita



    @[Isilme]




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)