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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


    reality is what she makes
    #1

    Oriash

    they promised that dreams can come true

    Time passes without her truly noticing. Life changes, hers included, and with it she changes, though this too she only sort of notices. She is not quite grown, but almost, her baby fuzz gone and her filling out around the edges, beautiful but strange and nothing remarkable in Beqanna. Her mind doesn’t feel changed though. Most days she still feels like a child, even if she isn’t, but it’s hard to imagine growing up. Yet she is growing up, chafing at the confines and boredom and uselessness.

    Winter has come, and she tries to recall when exactly she’d come to Loess. Had she wintered here already? Must have, she thinks, as she walks through the now familiar land. The reality of seasons, like the reality of most things, escapes her though, and she can never quite put herself in a particular time and place. After all, reality was what she made of it.

    It is vastly clear she has no intentions of leaving Loess though, of returning to the Cove. Perhaps it was clear the moment he stole her away, when she left quietly as a child, when she should have wept and wailed and instead simply following, curious, in his wake. They have not spoken for over a year, captor and captive, and the meeting she seeks today is long overdue. Some part of her wonders how recognizable she is, though she knows that her coloring alone makes her obvious. If it weren’t for the blue leopard spots though, does she still look the same?

    Her antlers have grown, the weight heavy on her head. She is lean and long now, still with a bit too much leg but most of her fits together nicely. Her wings have grown, strong enough to be used and carry her places, though Ori still finds herself mostly tethered to the ground. The sky does not beckon her, though on occasion she visits it anyway for a change. She is something, now. Something more than a child, though she does not yet know what that something is.

    It is the beginning of that question she seeks today.

    but they forgot that nightmares are dreams too.




    @[Castile] if you have a minute....she'd like to officially stay

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

    #2
    and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
    a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
    It’s funny how easily time slips by like sand even through the smallest crevices. Each day passes by. Lately, it’s as though he takes a breath at dawn only to exhale and already be shrouded in the night’s shadow. Castile blames the war and the turbulence that he has helped create to awaken the slumbering world of Beqanna. Everything was happening so fast and suddenly he is struggling to keep stride.

    Oriash, the precious young child of the Cove, has exceeded her expected stay and yet Castile hasn’t the heart to dismiss her. Their prior interaction was brief as they strolled through the night back into Loess. What a quiet girl he thought then, but the prowess rippling beneath the surface gravitated him closer. Even when off in Tephra, even in Sylva, Oriash was still on his mind, quietly lurking just as she does in Loess.

    Her stoicism creeps into his thoughts and lures him from a brief stagnation. Sylva has been won, and now Loess’ riled nature has settled. His battle wound is puckered as it tries to heal, and his muscles groan exhaustedly when he leans into motion. Fortunately, he crests only single hill before seeing and reaching her.

    Observant and calculating eyes drink in the sight of her antlers. They reach greater heights now – has she truly been in Loess so long? Has time truly escaped him? – and pose a greater threat than what she had upon arrival. He doesn’t fear them, however, as he comfortably draws to a halt with a languid smile tilting his lips. ”Oriash,” he says her name as though she is a daughter, endearing and warm. Castile doesn’t mask his inner fondness of the girl, or his relief to still see her among them. ”You stayed,” he trails off, his voice gentled by the hope that she will continue to do so.


    castile


    @[Oriash]
    #3

    Oriash

    they promised that dreams can come true

    He finds her quickly, which surprises her. It was almost as if he’d been looking for her, and perhaps he had, or perhaps she’d simply been in the right place at the right time. After all, she doesn’t flatter herself to think that he really wants anything to do with her, and yet, he greets her in a way that feels fatherly, familial, and she finds herself even quieter than usual for a moment. You stayed… he says, and his voice is soft. Hopeful? Could he possibly be hopeful that she would stick around?

    Certainly, though she can see why. To keep the child he’d stolen away was a win in his column in this war she didn’t entirely understand, but she’s no fool. Eventually, she’ll understand that her power too is attractive, that there is so much she can do besides color the world and get lost between reality and illusion, but she has only just begun to scratch the surface of these things, self-taught as she is. In this moment though, she simply understands she is capable of being a very useful pawn, and yet…

    And yet she cannot help but hear something more in his voice. Not that she doesn’t think there are motives that she can guess at and perhaps some she can’t, but still, if that is all she is to him, he does quite a good job hiding it. “I was hoping to make it my home, if you’ll have me,” she says, quiet as always but she meets his eyes and keeps her gaze steady on his, though some part of her feels like she ought to curl in on herself. That is not the girl she wants to be though, not the girl she wants to present to the dragon king. After all, it was time to be more than she was.

    but they forgot that nightmares are dreams too.




    @[Castile]

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

    #4
    and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
    a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
    Castile doesn’t understand why it’s so easy to treat her like this, like she is one of them and always has been. It’s effortless – his softened expression, his warm voice – and simply happens once Oriash is near enough to hear him and see him. Perhaps it is because she is Solace’s child. Although he was once bitter toward their destination changes, everything has settled. The dust has fallen and the animosity has dissipated. What he remembers now, and easily recalls, is Solace’s compassion. If the roles were reversed, she would be just as warm to his children. She would extend a hand and steady their wobbling steps in a new world. At night, she would probably even kiss their brow and wonder what could have been.

    And so he looks at Oriash fondly and scrutinizes her antlers that are so much like Kagerus’. He admires her like a proud father would before leveling his eyes onto hers. Innocently, hopefully, she peers up at him though month after month she grows and becomes less of a child. Soon, she will have a greater role to fill than idly wandering.

    She wants it, he gathers. She has some sort of ambition that influences her request, and who is he to deny her?

    The answer comes quickly to his lips, flirting with the edge of his tongue before finally saying, ”Yes, of course.” The contract has been signed, the wish fulfilled. A smile cuts across his face because although he is pleased to have her among them as another recruit, it gives him some satisfaction to have steered her from her birthright and birth home. Kagerus, especially, would be angry if she knew. But Castile says nothing of them, nothing of Oriash’s parents as he leans forward to brush her forelock rather playfully. ”I like you more than I thought I would,” he chuckles when his lips retract slowly from the warmth of her skin, the soft truth tumbling effortlessly from his mouth, because everything with her is effortless.


    castile


    @[Oriash]
    #5

    Oriash

    they promised that dreams can come true

    She doesn’t know exactly what she wants – not yet. How could she? How can she know anything when she has experienced so little? For all the hardships of her childhood, her life was not truly hard. Yes, her mothers had left her but Dawn had taken care of her. Yes, she’d been stolen away, but she found solace and a home in the place she was whisked away to. Her life was daydreams and nightmares, it was painting and weaving and changing the world to whatever she desired. Yet she didn’t know what she desired.

    The thing she had learned so far is that fear or power are not the ways to someone’s heart, but the things they most love. Nightmares were fear and shadows and darkness, all things that someone can overcome. Whether the goal is to get at someone’s heart to comfort, to befriend, to care for as Solace might have done for her other children or to get at someone’s heart to break it in pieces, as she suspects Castile might do, it doesn’t matter. The most effective way is always the same.

    This much she has learned by simply being, by wandering, by practicing, by seeing the way Pteron’s face changed at the sight of his dead brother. She hadn’t intended to use the memory to learn what she learned, and she had no intentions of using it against her perhaps one true friend, but it had been a lesson. A lesson that she needed to understand.

    Her gift was so much more than she had once thought, and she was beginning to understand that. The question was not what could she do, but rather what did she want to do with it? Who did she want to be? Her gift was so much more than just a blur between reality and illusion, so much more than just her shaky grip on fact version fiction. It was the power to bring them all to their knees or raise them higher.

    Staying here already felt like a choice, like a baby step down a path that she knew she would one day head down.

    He tells her she can stay, and she would have laughed to know that it brought him pleasure to think of how the choice would make Kagerus angry. Solace had accepted it, without question. Solace had found her. Kagerus though…well, Ori had no interest in making her mother proud.

    He reaches forward to brush her forelock, a gesture she finds strange though she doesn’t stop him. Contact is not something she really understands, not something she had grown up with. Even here, she was mostly alone, and knew little else besides such solidarity. She almost laughs at his comment though, and though she doesn’t, her lips twist in something of a smirk. “Should I be flattered?” she asks in that matter-of-fact way she has perfected, and yet there’s a hint of sarcasm in her voice, a hint of growing up.

    She pauses for a moment, before adding. “What can I do?” and though she doesn’t clarify, she is sure he understands. What can she do for Loess? For herself?

    Who will she be?

    but they forgot that nightmares are dreams too.



    @[Castile]

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





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