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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


    all the ashes in my wake; kensa
    #21

    He wonders at the greedy way he touches her now. The soft and demanding—the reassuring, explorative ways that his mouth returns to her. To the slope of her shoulder, the curve of her neck, the gentle arch of her throat. He traces and touches almost without though. As if to remind himself that she is real and that she is not a figment of his lonely mind, his angry heart—that she will not disappear with pressure.

    She mentions Wonder and his face becomes a clashing of emotion. He feels the familiar pull of adoration he has always felt for his sister—the protective rush at the way they had claimed one another as children. She was his other half and he was hers. They ran wild together amongst the wolves underneath the shadow of the volcano. They had not needed to read minds to know one another.

    In another world (maybe this world, maybe), Kensa would meet Wonder.

    They would like one another he thinks, and the smile that touches his lips is both sad and nostalgic.

    “Not at all, actually,” he laughs. “She is a softer red and sports armor made of bone.” It was another gift that had no clear heritage. Neither of their parents were armored or wore wings and he wonders why he and his sister had been given such odd gifts. “Her eyes are the color of the ocean. You’ve never met any one with a kinder heart.” He laughs a little under his breath and then exhales, leaning against Kensa.

    When she begins to talk about her own childhood, he perks up a little, listening intently in that fierce way of his. His light grey eyes hold onto her own and rarely blink, studying her underneath the fiery swath of his own forelock. “It sounds like a wonderful childhood,” he comments, thinking that although the details are so different from his own small, private family, the root of love and freedom was so much the same.

    “Tephra is wild and vast,” he comments, his brow twitching. “I never paid much mind to anything of its formal proceedings, but Magnus was always kind when we met and it was large enough for two young souls with a penchant for running.” He looks out to the horizon, eyes distant. “We looked quite the strange pair. My father’s wolves accompanied us pretty much wherever we went, unless we were sneaky enough to outsmart them, which we rarely were.” He rolls his shoulders, ignoring the pang of loneliness.

    “Perhaps one day I will return.”

    He won’t, he thinks, and his heart twists with it.

    Desperate to feel anything but the bite of guilt, he kisses down her face and bites lightly at the corner of her mouth. “Tell me something you haven’t told anyone before.” Another kiss. “Something just for me.”

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]
    #22

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you


    She does not lean into his touches but lets them drift across her skin like leaves upon the water, savoring the variation of pressure, the places he chooses to linger, the paths he chooses. Kensa herself lingers, her lips pressing a moment to the curve of his neck as he bends it to draw his lips along her shoulder. That kiss then carefully smoothed into his skin by the brush of her muzzle, the press of her cheek.

    Kensa is a force of nature and time spent with Brigade should be like a clash of storms over dark water. He frightens her still-- in this moment he is so open to her, and there is this feeling of being suspended and very in danger of breaking something. This exists alongside another sensation. It is like falling, a bit into sleep or a bit off a cliff, both of these somehow the same sweet inevitable feeling.

    The deep rise and fall of Brigade’s voice paints a picture of the sister he loves and the home to which he was born. She pulls back now and then just to look into his face, catch the edge of a rare smile or a sad wistful glint in his gray eyes. She knows Magnus, remembers that once she might have chosen differently and fallen for Tephra instead of her Hyaline. “I might have lived in Tephra myself, Magnus invited me once.” She does not say that she had been sillier then or that she had believed that someone in Hyaline had needed a friend like her. That a princeling had tripped her up and then forgotten about her entirely. These are old and far away things that she does not think of often anymore, though she can pull the image of handsome buckskin Magnus to mind upon hearing his name once more. Kensa smiles at the idea of a pair of red children running in tandem with wolves of black and gray and sable through a wet green Tephra. “Why did you leave?” Is her whisper, his shoulders having rolled to push down an emotion that she is not able to easily read. Brigade is ever a mystery but at last that does not frustrate her. She reaches out to brush his forelock gently across his brow, many leave behind the homes of  their youth but not always happily.

    Brigade’s kisses, the bite at the corner of her mouth, make her laugh even as a thrill sings through her belly. Her head angles quickly to nip once at his lower lip, and because she cannot resist Kensa presses a kiss to his mouth, tasting the sweetness of his breath. Her pulse quickens a fraction but she pulls herself back just enough, trying to turn her thoughts to the question. “Something just for you…” Muses the gold trimmed woman as her thoughts try to linger on the strong lines of his features instead.

    She has many secrets, but nearly all of them belong to someone else too. She could tell him about places she likes to go when she wants to be alone, or what she was about to do right before she found him in her line of sight, the nickname given her by the dappled mare who nursed her… That however does give her an idea, and she smiles and says.  “My name means first, and when I was little it was always important to me to be the first one everywhere my family went. I was always in the front, racing ahead. Its hard to be like that as an adult but sometimes, when I feel like I can be someplace all alone I pretend I’m the first one to ever be there. Like an explorer or a lone heroine coming upon a new world.” Embarrassed Kensa ducks her face against his neck before continuing. “There is a place in Hyaline, a ridge in the mountains that takes hours to reach on foot. Sometimes I go there and look west and pretend I’m the first to see Beqanna that way, laid out before me, ageless but somehow clean and honest and brand new.” She doesn’t laugh at herself in the end. Only pulls back a little, waits for him to think she’s ridiculous. Giving Brigade a sideways glance, breathing in the smell of him while her heart quietly beats out a rhythm for this reckless attraction, Kensa grows quiet again and just watches him with soft ochre eyes.

    Kensa



    @[brigade]
    #23

    How strange that they would have once been together in Tephra. The idea that she would have called his home her own—that he would not have had to venture outward to find her. It makes something spark and then glow in his chest. Something that is both beautiful and painful, almost too bright for him to look at directly when he thinks of all of the almosts and should have beens in his life. Everything so close.

    His lip twitches into an almost smile then, thinking so deeply that he almost misses her question.

    A muscle jumps in his jaw at the suddenness of it, the pain that presses sharply between his shoulder blades, and it takes everything within him to still at the touch of her on his forehead. “It’s a long story,” he offers, trying to keep the edge from his voice—an edge that does not belong directed at her but rather at himself. An edge that burrows beneath his skin and cuts at all of the loneliest parts of him.

    “Maybe one day,” he softens and there is a question in the furrowing of his brow.

    Will she be okay giving him this mystery?

    Will she be okay letting him keep these skeletons in their closet just a little longer?

    He lets the ghosts die in the back of his throat as he watches her, letting al that she is burn away the fog as he she kisses him—as her mouth claims his like she knows it. He smiles against her lips, against the quickness of it and the pulse that rises in him demanding that he lengthen it.

    Instead he listens, feeling his heart clench in his chest at the idea of her. It overwhelms him, this idea of her being young and this idea of her explorer’s heart. “I like that,” he says, pulling her close when she ducks into him and pressing a kiss onto the pieces of her that he can reach. “Maybe one day you can show me your secret spot and I can see the world through your eyes.” There is a second that is still, and his young and foolish heart pounds when his voice drops, husky and low so that only she can hear.

    “You are the first to reach me,” he confesses, closing his eyes and kissing her neck. “The only.”

    He can only hope she knows what he means.

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]
    #24

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you


    She cannot know what it is Brigade cannot tell her, only that it is impossible for him. He begins twice and can say nothing more and though her topaz eyes trace the hardness in his features (relaxed as he is, she sees him there: the citadel with gates shut tight) Kensa does not press. She does not give him too much softness, lest he feel pressured by a show of syrupy understanding. A little quiet settles between them —not uncomfortably—and then she nods once and slightly. Accepting his mystery, what secrets he may need to keep for himself.

    Until whenever or never.

    Naturally she is curious but she is protective too, of this man, the budding feelings between them. One day she may press, but the purpose or necessity of that is far beyond her tonight.

    Kensa laughs when she feels the smile on his lips and warmth spreads down her neck and over her shoulders, a little wildfire. She would rather kiss him again that tell her silly stories or embarrass herself to her serious Brigade, but they come apart in time for her to keep talking instead.

    When she told him about the filly who had to be first, there is a fullness in his voice, and warmth radiates off his body when he holds her blushing to himself. She will take him there, stand with him in the wildflowers and look toward horizons they may never touch. She does not know what he will do or say there, if he will stand and watch or leap from the ridge to try his wings from those heights but she wants to. She wants to live a million moments with Brigade, to wonder at his wildness day after day.

    She curls into him, so that her blonde poll is tucked beneath his strong wine-red jaw. Into her ears his words fall. They are hers alone, first yes, but that is not why her heart hammers or her eyes burn. “You are so incredibly beautiful, Brigade.” She breathes this in an awed whisper before drawing back to kiss the tender line of his jaw once and slowly.

    Kensa



    [brigade]
    #25

    He could love her, he thinks, holding her close to his chest, feeling the way she tucks against him and the way it feels so natural—so right. He has always been a boy enamored with the thorns of the world, the stone and the storm, but he finds that they live within her too. There is something impossibly complex about her that fascinates him; something of quiet meadows and raging rivers and poison and honey. He finds that there is plenty to fear, to worship, to want—plenty to keep him forever enamored.

    Such things cannot make it to his tongue just yet though.

    Such things live in the shadows of his guarded heart, a whisper that he can barely hear, let alone accept. It is easier to just let himself live in the space between breaths; it is easier to busy himself with the quiet rearranging of golden hair and the smoothing of her golden coat. It is easier to feel the warmth of her against him and think of the fires that she starts with the simplest of touches, the briefest of moments.

    “No,” he counters her, his throat tight and his voice nearly husky with everything unsaid. He wants to say more—to explain to her how unworthy he is of such compliments, but they die on his tongue and he is left with nothing but the tide of his pounding heart and the dryness of his mouth. “Just no.”

    There is another second and his eyes turn stormier, thunder living in the grey of them.

    “Spend the night with me, Kensa.” His mouth traces over her forehead and then dips below her jaw before skimming down to her mouth where he exhales before breathing in the sweet perfume of her.

    “I just—I just want to know what it is like to sleep well.”

    There is an exhaustion in the corner of his eyes, hints of a man who has never slept through the night, who does not know what it means to rest easy. He has only known fitful slumber—slumber that is so strained that he is more likely to give up trying and spend his evenings running until exhausted.

    His smile is smaller, nearly shy on his red-wine lips as the question hangs in the air between them.

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]
    #26

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you


    There is a seperate and perfect warmth, different unto itself, in being held by Brigade. He is solid, real, but feels like a dream of the savage wildness come into the form of a man to make her love him. Like a god taking another shape, or perhaps trapped in it. She luckily enough to give him comfort, or to find herself worthy of his attention.

    She too is perhaps over tired, to let her thoughts grow so whimsical.

    Brigade disputes being beautiful but Kensa takes no offense. She lets him protest, feeling the thunder of his pulse through his skin and wondering at it. Once more she does not press, but gives him the safety that might one day draw off whatever torments try to turn her adoration aside.  She does nip his jaw though, bravely keeping herself pressed close when she replies in a whisper,  fierce but affectionate. “I’ll have my own opinions.”

    In the growing darkness the night is colder, and his next question reaches her she cannot imagine backing out of his embrace to go up into Hyaline. Even if it were midday and warm and her responsibilities weighed heavy she would not go but perhaps saying something like that aloud would be too much for this newly planted thing. Her eyes fall closed as Brigade's lips roam her feminine features. The burgundy stallion's smile is so close to her mouth that an almost accidental touch tells her it is there. She cannot help the smile that blossoms on her own lips just before she presses them against his once more.

    “I will stay with you until you wake tomorrow, Brigade. In the morning send me away or I’ll stay right here for hours.” She breathes, grave and almost certain she will actually have to be sent off. She is too consumed by him, and its a terrifying thrilling thing.

    Kensa





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