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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


    [open]  all I've ever known is how to hold my own
    #1

    I can remember a time when I was so afraid
    when even my shadow wouldn't follow me


    “Elaina, it is just a story,” says her mother with that creamy blonde coat and big blue eyes that Elaina could just swim in, with a slight impatience marring her tone. But the little golden filly, who had her smile and her beauty with her father’s eyes, continued to stare up at her mother with eyes of amber, full of confusion, and, almost, sorrow, at her words. Just a story? But it couldn't be possible… “I’m confused.” She continued to stare, disbelieving, into her mother’s pale, taut face. “My little sunflower,” she sighs, shaking her head at her daughter who believed too much and dreamed too hard. “Elaina, it is a myth…a fairytale that mothers tell their young sons and daughters when they cannot sleep at night,” and then a radiant smile, not unlike Elaina’s own, pulls the sides of her face upwards. “Or to those children who refuse to sleep,” she says, tickling the sunshine painted child gently with her nose. Amber eyes close, enjoying the feeling of her porcelain mother’s touch. 

     So often when Elaina would close those eyes of wild amber, she would immediately be transported to a time when her mother was alive. Most of the time, the memories were seemingly insignificant: a walk to a flower patch, going down to the lake, visiting grandma, but they meant the world to my little sunflower. Now though, as more and more time has passed, Elaina finds those memories don't always come to her. She thinks instead of those faces in Beyond, and she must push through all of them to find the smokey cream face of her mother. Then, when it does come in, she finds at times, it isn't quite as sharp, her pale skin not as perfect, her eyes not as blue, her smile not as sharp. To keep the image in her mind, the sunflower girl must keep her focus, attempting to find every dip and curve of her mother’s face, concentrating on those little pieces because is so fearful that one day she may not be able to hold onto it any more. She may wake up from a dream about those sky blue eyes and wonder who they possibly could have belonged to, and what stranger’s face she had been looking into. 

     She has found her purchase within the meadow once more. Elaina had been digging in the snow earlier for food, but it was hardly worth the effort for the brown grass it produced. So, to spite boredom, she keeps walking, halting her steps only when she reaches a small creek that immediately brings her back to Murmuring Rivers, the place where she had grieved, where she had looked Frostbane in the eyes and told him she would end him. The place where she first met her crimson cousin. 

     Elaina thinks about how it must e strange for the residents here to see a new face, but in the same breath it too makes Elaina think of the story her mother had told her one night: about the gnat and the stallion. A small gnat, after flying many miles, it had found the tail of a stallion to rest upon. It was only when he felt well enough to continue on did he speak up, pardoning himself for having bothered the stallion by using him as a resting place. “You must be glad I am going now,” he said. “It is all the same to me,” said the stallion in response. “I did not even know you were there.” She remembers what her mother had said to her after. That we are often far more important in our own eyes than in the eyes of our neighbor. And with a laugh to herself, Elaina settles back, content to be another face in the crowd.



    elaina*
    benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl
    Reply
    #2
    Pond
    Pond is alone at the moment, walking silently through the Meadow with her eyes, gray and somewhat dulled by her heavy thoughts, downcast and her shadowy wings hugged close to her shoulders as if for protection. In truth, she doesn’t truly want to socialize or even be seen at the moment; ever since last spring she has avoided such situations. She feels stained by what had happened - by her encounter with Rajanish - even though it had been far beyond her control. She had been frail, weakened by the plague (and, unbeknownst to her, by the stallion’s disease acceleration magic) and unable to fight him off when he had singled her out.

    It didn’t take long for the resultant colt, Pond’s very first, to affect the young mare just the same. The foal looked just like his father and bore the same magic, although Oaks’ acceleration was, and remains, uncontrollable. Even though the plague had been cured, Pond continued to ail weaken in her son’s presence. She has since taken to avoiding him when she can and she has maintained this practice for an entire year.

    It weighed heavily on her heart, for she had always been coddled and cherished by her own parents (before the Reckoning had so unkindly separated her from her family). Shouldn’t every child be afforded the same sort of affection and care? But Oaks hurt her in so many ways that she could not bear to be near him for any longer than was necessary. Luckily, as he has now been weaned for some time and has grown capable of greater independence than in his foalhood, leaving him behind does not make her feel quite as wretched.

    And, perhaps, venturing to the Meadow is not as bad an idea as it had seemed in the back of her mind when she realized her feet were guiding her this way. She is still wary and doubtful that this excursion will bring her any joy or distraction, but that does not seem to be the case for all those who wander the grasses. Nearby where Pond had paused for a drink from a quiet trickle of water fed by the thawing snows, a faint but light (at least to her ears) laugh catches her attention through the general murmuring around her. Finally, she looks upward to find the source of the sound and settles upon the gold-coated mare not far off.

    Despite her recent aversion to conversation, she urges herself to step forward. Pond had never really been one to back down from challenges like these, even if it is something rather self-inflicted. The mind is a terrible weapon, especially when wielded against oneself, but she knows that she is strong enough to overcome her self-inflicted contrition. She had to, after all, if she wanted to take on the next adventure (for after every night there is a dawn) that would eventually find her.

    “It’s nice to hear that someone still laughs around here,” she says to Elaina in a somewhat somber tone. The smile that touches her mouth is still a bit sad but she does her best not to be the rain cloud in a sunny sky. She is trying to escape this sodden feeling, after all. The wispy black wings she carries shift a little as she tucks her chin somewhat apologetically. “Forgive me if I’m intruding… Are you new to these parts, if I may ask?” In her recent experience, after all, only children, newcomers, and lovebirds seemed to have true cause to be mirthful lately.





    @[Elaina] hope you don't mind my rambling and mild rustiness Tongue
    Reply
    #3

    I can remember a time when I was so afraid
    when even my shadow wouldn't follow me



    Like so many other individuals, Elaina was not without a few skeletons in her closet. She has kept quiet her secrets while in this land. How her parents had died when she had been nothing more than a child, how she had been chased down by a wicked, icy maniac, and she has not told anyone about how she left her lover cold and in the wind, in search of something to fill her heart that a lover’s touch just couldn't seem to reach.

    She says she is here to gin Lilli, and that is all, that she is here to find Lilli and take her back to Beyond or to Windskeep, any where but this place, this strange place, with magic that Elaina, the descendent of wind makers, has never seen before, has never imagined. She will get her crimson cousin and they will go, they could not stay here. But she can feel it, feel it in the strangest of ways. There is something that seems to shoot up her spine with an electric jolt that causes her sometimes to physically jump whenever she contemplates leaving this new land. It is enough to send her pack to that wandering once more. Thinking, always thinking because it would seem she has been left with little else these days. The echo of her thoughts is the only voice she has heard in quite some time. This isn't the first time in her life though that she has felt lonely, but she realizes this may be one of the first times that she is actually alone.

    Elaina has hardly realized that her charming laughter has some how managed to reach another’s ears. She had thought most people in the meadow were simply passing through, that no one would spare the golden girl like embalmed sunshine a second glance. She was not offended by the thought of others ignoring her, but she cannot help the little lift in her heart when the other female’s voice manages to cause those ears atop her head to flutter in the direction of her voice.

    “It is important to find a moment of laughter and a smile each day,” she says, and it makes those amber eyes glisten with a memory. She has no picture to go along with it, but she remembers these exact words her mother had spoken to her often. “For when we run out of moments what is left?” Elaina asks the stranger, remembering the other words. And Beylani had lived true to those words until she took her final breath, a smile haunting her face, even when the light had already left her eyes, a ghost of her happiness.

    She cannot help but attune to the other mare’s somber smile, a smile Elaina had worn for so long, sadness weary on her flesh, grief burrowing in the creases of her cheeks. “I am new, though not as new as I felt at the start,” she says, trying to sum up the emotions that have been rolling over her. “If that makes any sense at all. I think I am starting to get my barrings, maybe,” she says, still unsure, still unsure of a lot of things. “And what about yourself?” Bright amber eyes, her father’s eyes looking back at the pretty mare. “Were you born around here, or did some grand adventure lead you down this path?”


    elaina*
    benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl


    @[Pond]
    Reply




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